On 6 July 2018, FAO Geneva organized the second session of the FAO Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks. This session focused on agriculture export restrictions and featured a comprehensive presentation by Georgios Mermigkas. His presentation highlighted the main types of export restrictions and their policy objectives, examples of their use in different countries and for different commodities, short and long-term impacts, current rules governing the use of export restrictions in the WTO and in regional trade agreements, and proposals to strengthen existing disciplines. The interactive discussion with a panel of speakers, who shared country and regional experiences and opinions, focused on the following overarching questions:

• Do export restrictions enhance or undermine food security?
• Should the WTO disciplines on export restrictions be stricter or allow greater flexibility?
• How can food security concerns be elevated from a national to a regional point of view, to ensure cooperation between countries in stabilizing food stocks and prices, rather than policies that may be harmful to neighbors?

Georgios Mermigkas's presentation is available here:  http://www.fao.org/3/CA0473EN/ca0473en.pdf

About the FTT

FAO supports Member Countries’ effective engagement in the formulation of trade agreements that are conducive to improved food security by strengthening evidence on the implications of changes in trade policies, providing capacity development in the use of this evidence, and facilitating neutral dialogue away from the negotiating table. In this spirit, the FAO is starting a dialogue series titled as “FAO Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks (FTT)” based on 3i;

Informal: exchanging information, ideas and views without any attributions and reporting. Interactive: providing a neutral platform for dialogue and engagement among stakeholders. Inspirational: sharing knowledge and ideas for use in policy and negotiations accordingly.

Each session of the FTT will feature a presentation of the FAO’s knowledge and analysis on the topic in focus, followed by interactive discussion, questions and answers.

Topics for forthcoming FTTs

1. Agriculture Trade and Climate Change
2. Fisheries Subsidies
3. Trade Facilitation for Agriculture
4. Trade and Nutrition